Apple retail: Istanbul store to open April 5, Vancouver store to expand in 2015

The first official Apple retail store in Turkey is set to open its doors next Saturday in Istanbul, while one of Apple's outlets in Vancouver, British Columbia will reportedly be moving to a 'substantially' larger space in the fall of 2015.

Apple has chosen Istanbul's Zorlu Center as the host for its first retail store in the ancient city, according to Turkish blog Webrazzi. The grand opening will take place at 10 a.m. local time next Saturday.

Though this will be Turkey's first brick-and-mortar Apple store, the company opened its online store in the pan-continental nation last October. Apple CEO Tim Cook met with Turkish president Abdullah G?l in February, and the parties are believed to have discussed possible R&D investments alongside tax incentives and localization of Apple's Siri virtual assistant, the iOS implementation of a Turkish keyboard and increasing local App Store content.

Meanwhile, 6,000 miles away, Apple is said to be planning to expand its Pacific Centre shop in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company will move to a location adjacent to a new Nordstrom outlet in the mall, according toRetail Insider.

There is no word on how large the space will be, but the current Pacific Centre store runs 5,400 square feet and the new location is believed to be "substantially larger." The publication notes that the shop sold "in excess of $75 million last year," nearly $14,000 per square foot.

Turkey has a fascinating culture. I'm very excited for them with the first Apple Store of their own.

With their apparent sincerity and enthusiasm with Apple products and services as signaled by the President's visit to Cupertino, we should be hearing a lot more good news in the not-too-distant future.

Turkey has a fascinating culture. I'm very excited for them with the first Apple Store of their own.

With their apparent sincerity and enthusiasm with Apple products and services as signaled by the President's visit to Cupertino, we should be hearing a lot more good news in the not-too-distant future.

Yes, but the political standoff currently afflicting the country could become worse with the pending elections and demonstrations in Istanbul this weekend. Their government's blocking of Twitter and YouTube could tend to dampen the sprits of the otherwise exciting event of an Apple Store opening. Turkey might become the next Ukraine.

I guess Erdogan isn't planning to block iCloud any time soon (not until after Tim leaves anyway) like he did with Twitter and YouTube. That's good news for lovers of free speech.

Yup. He apparently got caught talking about payoffs in return for "friendly police and judges", access to government contracts, and various other schemes? It's a little late to try shutting down the conversation about it as the video and audio are pretty widespread already.

That was followed up of course with Turkish leaders plotting a false flag operation as an excuse to invade Syria and the recording of the meeting making it to YouTube.Edited by Gatorguy - 3/28/14 at 10:18am

Turkey has a fascinating culture. I'm very excited for them with the first Apple Store of their own.

With their apparent sincerity and enthusiasm with Apple products and services as signaled by the President's visit to Cupertino, we should be hearing a lot more good news in the not-too-distant future.

iPads for succulent lamb kabobs is a good trade.

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example" Mark Twain"Just because something is deemed the law doesn't make it just" - SolipsismX

Every single time Turkey comes up you guys gotta show off your ethnocentrism. Even though Turkey has towns older than Jericho, a temple complex that is the oldest so far discovered (c.10,000BCE), the center of origin of agriculture, one of the world's greatest cuisines, and so on.

Xenophobia is too restrictive. How about xenignosis to describe what you suffer from?

The larger Pacific Centre Apple store will be nice but they should really open a store here in Kelowna. At least it could service the interior of BC. Kelowna has the highest per capita millionaires in Canada. I'm sure they'd sell a few products here ;)

“What would I do? I’d shut Apple down and give the money back to the shareholders”

Every single time Turkey comes up you guys gotta show off your ethnocentrism. Even though Turkey has towns older than Jericho, a temple complex that is the oldest so far discovered (c.10,000BCE), the center of origin of agriculture, one of the world's greatest cuisines, and so on.

Xenophobia is too restrictive. How about xenignosis to describe what you suffer from?

I fail to see a single ethnocentric comment in this thread.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

1) Istanbul used to be name Constantinople, just as Mumbai was Bombay, New York was New Amsterdam, St. Petersburg was Leningrad was St. Petersburg, and countless other cities whose names have changed throughout recorded history, but I only know of one that was immortalized in a catchy song from the 1950's that was remade in 1990 by the band They Might Be Giants.

2) First of all, counterweight scales are not only still in use to a massive degree but are more accurate than other scale types. Secondly, her apples are in a plastic bag which means she's clearly not primitive. Finally, Constantinople was changed to Istanbul in 1930 after a tremendous run of over 1600 years.. That was nearly a half-century before Apple Computer was founded and almost 3/4 of a century before the first Apple Store was opened.

3) Why don't you choose one. I am quite curious how any comment or photograph here in any way showed extreme patriotism against Turkey, aggressive, warlike policies toward Turkey, bad-manners toward Turks, or an intense or irrational dislike or fear toward people of Turkey. In fact, I'd say the only irrationity are your comments about our comments that in no way disparaged, belittled, or denigrated the people of Turkey, Istanbul, notor Constantinople.

jingoism |ˈjiNGgōˌizəm|nounchiefly derogatory
Extreme patriotism, esp. in the form of aggressive or warlike foreign policy.

boorish |ˈbo͝oriSH|adjective
Rough and bad-mannered; coarse.

xenophobia |ˌzēnəˈfōbēə, ˌzenə-|noun
Intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries.

edit: I take that back¡ Her use of the scale is primitive because our entire system of using an international prototype kilogram stored in a Paris vault is primitive. Now should I get upset with you by assuming you meant that every way in which we measure mass are primitive?¡ This is primitive because it's losing mass and it's because it's a physical object. We need a more precise and unwavering unit by which to determine mass and the answer may lie with atomic weights but we don't yet have equipment to measure a very specific number of atoms.Edited by SolipsismX - 3/28/14 at 10:25pm

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

3) Why don't you choose one. I am quite curious how any comment or photograph here in any way showed extreme patriotism against Turkey, aggressive, warlike policies toward Turkey, bad-manners toward Turks, or an intense or irrational dislike or fear toward people of Turkey. In fact, I'd say the only irrationity are your comments about our comments that in no way disparaged, belittled, or denigrated the people of Turkey, Istanbul, notor Constantinople.

Maybe just settle on bad manners, with aggravated circumstances caused by lack of visiting the civilization in question. Doing so would show how inappropriate the picture is.

For the rest, check out this thread from last year, including a gratuitous insult about getting paid in advance, and even a post from jragosta, not insulting:

1) I've been to Turkey and if you're going to Turkey you might as well go to Istanbul or you're missing out.

2) I'm still not seeing where anyone's comments here, in any way, are how you describe the country, city and/or the culture. Have you never seen a woman selling Apples? I've probably seen apples being sold in every country I've been to so I don't understand why you'd go after @mstone for mentioning how the "old" apple store. Note that the context clearly infers 1930 or earlier.

3) You've now shown that you get overly defensive about Turkey. I agree that a comment about being paid in advance implies that the purchaser isn't trustworthy but I didn't see anything in @SpamSandwich's comment that in anyway refers to the Turkish people. This is where I would ask questions to get specifics. Maybe he specifically doesn't like and/or trust the Prime Minister, or maybe he doesn't trust governments at all, or maybe he's basing this on their GDP, or something else entirely, but you seem to be assuming it's because he is Turksih and therefore not to be trusted. We can rule out that possibility without more info but it's certainly not the factual, anti-Turkish remark you make it out to be. It's like if you were to say that you don't like a particular rap song and then I jumped on you for being racist. That might be the case, but that's a very, very big leap to make on the given data.Edited by SolipsismX - 3/29/14 at 12:07pm

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

I'm still not seeing where anyone's comments here, in any way, are how you describe the country, city and/or the culture. Have you never seen a woman selling Apples? I've probably seen apples being sold in every country I've been to so I don't understand why you'd go after

@mstone for mentioning how the "old" apple store. Note that the context clearly infers 1930 or earlier.

Oh jeez, I've done it again. Accidentally offended another ethnic group. For the record, I used to date a Turkish girl who is now a doctor. We went to college together, She had a rather unusual name which drew a lot of mockery and I always defended her in that regard. Her father was an air conditioner salesman in the south west costal region of Turkey. I have nothing against Turkish people. I was just making a bad joke about Constantinople as being the "old" name. I guess my attempt at humor failed again.

I'd like to add that my previous comment (in another thread, noted above) about Apple getting paid up front was a reference to the current social upheaval and apparent political instability in Turkey. It had nothing whatsoever to do with xenophobia. In fact, at the time I had been watching a lot of video footage on Vimeo.com that had been uploaded by a person with a remote control quadrocopter. He had a number of videos showing overhead shots of the conflict.

Every single time Turkey comes up you guys gotta show off your ethnocentrism. Even though Turkey has towns older than Jericho, a temple complex that is the oldest so far discovered (c.10,000BCE), the center of origin of agriculture, one of the world's greatest cuisines, and so on.

Xenophobia is too restrictive. How about xenignosis to describe what you suffer from?

Just don't ask for Greek coffee.

"If the young are not initiated into the village, they will burn it down just to feel its warmth."- African proverb